


Come Back, Be Here

by Slanguage



Series: Prompts [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Going through a divorce AU, Happy Ending, M/M, Misunderstandings, Sad, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 20:25:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3783274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slanguage/pseuds/Slanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean’s world ended the night that Castiel walked through the door two hours and thirteen minutes late, his trench coat rumbled and his hair standing on edge, and tears rolling down his face as he shakily whispered, “I think I want a divorce.”</p><p>Dean had broken his arm once while jumping off a roof when he was six on a dare from Sam that he couldn’t really fly like a superhero. Dean had been in a car accident when he was sixteen and had been in the hospital for a week. He’d had to bury both of his parents within the span of a month, when his mom died of cancer and his dad couldn’t handle it, and turned to drinking instead of his family. None of that hurt as much as those words did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Back, Be Here

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from [here](http://shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com/post/116747563108/send-me-a-ship-and-a-number-and-ill-write-a-short)
> 
> (#50 Going through a divorce AU)

Dean’s world ended the night that Castiel walked through the door two hours and thirteen minutes late, his trench coat rumbled and his hair standing on edge, and tears rolling down his face as he shakily whispered, “I think I want a divorce.”

Dean had broken his arm once while jumping off a roof when he was six on a dare from Sam that he couldn’t really fly like a superhero. Dean had been in a car accident when he was sixteen and had been in the hospital for a week. He’d had to bury both of his parents within the span of a month, when his mom died of cancer and his dad couldn’t handle it, and turned to drinking instead of his family. None of that hurt as much as those words did.

Dean had been too stunned by the horrible screaming pain in his chest to even say anything—he was pretty sure, at least. The only sound he could have comprehended coming out of his mouth wasn’t human, and he would have remembered that. His brain tripped over every single pleading word he could think of, every way he could beg and plead for Cas to want to stay, even though Dean knew he didn’t deserve it. Dean wanted to scream that he thought they were happy, that he didn’t know what the hell could’ve gone so wrong in the two weeks since Cas started getting distant, started being the first to pull away too soon.

Dean had wanted to ask why Cas didn’t love him anymore, but the only thing he knew he said was, “Do you want me to stay at Sam’s?”

Cas had paused, like that had surprised him, before nodding, looking away when his mouth quivered. Dean didn’t know how he had remained so stony through the whole exchange, how he wasn’t already on his knees and brokenly begging for Cas to stay. But he didn’t. He walked upstairs, packed a bag for a week, and paused only when he was about to walk out of the door, his hand gripping the knob. He thought he could hear Cas’s muffled sobs in the kitchen. He didn’t understand why Cas would want this if it hurt him so much.

But if it was what he wanted, Dean would do it. He would do anything for him.

So he opened the door, and he left.

He showed up at Sam’s house about an hour later, soaked through with the relentless rain that had started right around the time he realized he needed a walk to clear his head. Dean had been crying, chest heaving with sobs, for the better part of that, thankfully avoiding the gaze of alarmed or concerned people by the hour, edging to nine o’clock by the time he stumbled up the porch on shaking legs, clutching a duffle bag like maybe it would be an anchor and it would just drag him all the way down and end it quickly. Dean didn’t remember knocking, or ringing the doorbell, but then Sam was standing in the doorway, his eyes widening with alarm and fear at however the hell Dean looked like.

“Dean?” Sam asked, unable to hide his own panic. His wife Sarah appeared up the hallway, and she looked just as floored. Dean couldn’t remember the last time he had cried in front of people. _The wedding_ , he reminded himself, and had to bite down hard on his cheek to hold in a sob as Sam demanded, “What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

“Cas,” Dean said slowly, his voice breaking, and he flinched. “He—he asked for a divorce.”

Sarah’s hands flew up to cover her mouth. Sam’s heart broke in front of his very eyes, and in the next second he was tugging Dean into the house, closing the door behind him. Dean was thankful for that, because it felt like he couldn’t move his limbs anymore. Dean stood trembling in the entryway, not sure if it was from the wet and cold or because he could no longer feel his heart beating in his chest. He felt like, if he made any move at all, he would shatter into pieces. He figured even that would hurt less.

Dean had never been able to understand why his father had drunk himself into a heart attack after his mother died. Dean suddenly understood with great clarity in that moment, because he couldn’t figure out how the hell he was going to be able to keep living like this.

“Can,” Dean began, and then had to pause to catch his breath, feeling like there was no room in his chest for air. “Can I stay here? I—I don’t know how long.”

“Of course, Dean,” Sam assured him immediately, reaching up and grabbing him by the shoulder, like he was hoping to keep him upright. His eyes skittered nervously to Sarah before moving back to Dean, trying to hike his lips up into an encouraging smile, but Dean could read his little brother like a book. “You should get some sleep, huh? Want me to call you out of work tomorrow?”

Dean started to shake his head, and then hesitated, trying to imagine trying to fix a car when he couldn’t even keep his hands steady. He finally nodded, his shoulders slumping, and Sam smiled encouragingly back, tugging Dean by his grip on his shoulder to the stairs and up to the guest bedroom, where he left him after asking if he was hungry, thirsty, to help himself to anything in the fridge or cabinets, to get some sleep. Dean stood in the middle of the room and watched his brother close the door behind him before sinking down on the edge of the bed, not giving a damn that he was soaking wet.

Dean reached into his inner pocket and grabbed for his cell phone, hand shaking so hard, a million and one prayers that he would never say lingering in the back of his mind as he pressed the home button, hoping so strongly for the sign of a call or a text, anything to take it back—but there was nothing. Not a single call, not a single text. Not a single regret from the man he loved with all of his being that didn’t want that love anymore.

Dean wanted to throw the phone against the wall, but didn’t have the energy. He pealed himself out of his wet clothes and crawled under the covers in the dark, curling his hands against the sheet and gripping tight, feeling colder under the comforter than he did in Sam’s entryway. Eventually his hands came up to claw at the skin over his heart, hoping to feel something, anything, but there was nothing. More and more nothing, more and more regret and anguish and love not enough to keep the man of his dreams with him. All he could think of was the look on Cas’s face as he cried in the living room, the way he had looked like his heart was breaking. The way that Dean was suddenly so angry at, because this, _this_ was real heartbreak. This was—this was—

Dean didn’t know what it was. But it was the worst thing he’d ever felt, and he just wanted it to be over.

In the end, he ended up lulling off into a couple hours of restless sleep from nothing more than pure exhaustion. And if he woke up two hours later out of a nightmare, with Cas’s name on his lips and his hands reaching toward the empty part of the bed where Cas was supposed to be—well, that was for him to know.

~*~

Life fell into a coping kind of rhythm over the next couple of days. Dean went to work, ate food when people expected him do, and snuck half-bottles of whiskey after Sam and Sarah had gone to sleep like he was a teenager trying not to get in trouble with his parents. The alcohol was enough to numb, enough to get him to sleep. Enough so that he would wake up the next morning feeling a lot more of nothing, and he could force himself out of bed and start the day, going through the motions one more time.

It lasted for the rest of the workweek, at least. Three days that he was in work, and then the weekend hit and it all started going wrong. Dean didn’t have anything to do to keep his mind and his hands busy. He and Cas would normally just lounge around, but that wasn’t an option, not when even the slightest mention of his husband would set Dean into a morose cloud of hopeless sadness. Dean didn’t want to get in the middle of Sam and Sarah’s normal routine, either, so he instead locked himself in the guest bedroom and drank the whole bottle of whiskey instead of half, and repeated the process for the next day.

Sam waited until Monday to corner him about it. Dean had been so close to getting away before his Yeti brother had sensed his presence, and he appeared behind Dean on the stairs and asked cheerfully if they could talk about things. Dean even on a good day would rather shove a fork down his throat than talk about his feelings, but he had a little less fight in him than usual, so he just nodded and let Sam lead him to the home office he kept on the first floor, closing the door solidly behind them and sitting down on the couch, raising his eyebrows when Dean didn’t immediately sit. Dean reluctantly lowered himself into the other side of the couch, his eyes on his hands, on that stupid wedding ring that he couldn’t bring himself to take off.

“Dean,” Sam began cautiously, “you need to talk to him.”

Dean felt like he was going to throw up when he shook his head. Sam turned a frown on him, albeit a sympathetic one.

“What happened?” Sam demanded. “With the—what happened to make him decide that?”

“He’s been acting distant,” Dean told him, and then flinched, hating himself so strongly that he just wanted to drown in liquor and accept the rest of his inevitably lonely and painfully empty existence. Dean looked down at his hands again. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t—I don’t _think_ I did anything. I think he just decided he wasn’t happy.”

Sam didn’t respond for a long moment. Dean eventually looked back at his brother, wondering what the hell was making him think so hard, only to find Sam scowling at him like Dean had said something to irritate him.

“That makes no sense,” Sam finally declared.

That made Dean angry. He glared sharply at Sam and replied, “As if you’re the leading authority on my marriage.”

Sam shrunk back sheepishly, seeming to realize what he’d said. He shook his head at Dean for a few seconds, that thoughtful look returning to his face, this time it being just so sad. Dean couldn’t even keep looking at him, just turned his gaze back to that ring.

“You need to talk to him,” Sam declared, and then shot Dean a mean glare when he tried to protest. “Seriously, you do. You need to sit down with him and figure out what happened, because you can still save this. It could just be a big misunderstanding or it could be for something you understand, but you can’t keep living like this, Dean. You need some kind of closure, and if it means finding out something that hurts you, then maybe that’s what you have to do.”

Dean was silent for a moment, not agreeing with Sam but not wanting to say that out loud. Eventually, he finally admitted, “I need to go back to the house. To pack some more stuff up.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No,” Dean said slowly. “No, I’ll go tomorrow after work. Before he gets home.”

Sam was practically radiating disproval but he still said, “Alright. Let me know if you change your mind.”

Dean nodded and got up from the couch, and was almost to the door before Sam stopped him by saying, “No drinking tonight, alright? I—I’m worried about you.”

Dean paused, not saying anything, knowing that Sam would automatically know his answer. Dean couldn’t see him but he was sure his little brother’s shoulders slumped in disappointment, in worry, before Dean pushed his way through the door and left without turning back, heading back up to the guest room, where he could at least lose himself for a couple of hours.

~*~

Cas’s office job was located across town, in the more city part of downtown. With stoplights and traffic, he typically didn’t show up until around six o’clock on weeknights. Dean’s job, however, was about five minutes away, so when he walked in at only a handful of minutes past five, he knew that he had about forty minutes to shove as much stuff into the Impala as he could in order to avoid Cas just the way the other man probably wanted him to.

What he wasn’t counting on was walking through the door and finding Cas sitting in the living room, his head in his hands and a bottle of wine complete with drained glass sitting in front of him. Cas’s head snapped up when the door opened, eyes wide and surprised, and Dean froze in the doorway, terrified. Cas’s eyes were rimmed red with tears.

They stared at each other for a long time, long enough that Dean realized how much he had fucking missed those blue eyes, how much it felt like his heart was being torn out of his chest with how much he had missed this man. Finally, Dean cleared his throat, awkwardly stepping into the house and letting the door swing shut behind him, fidgeting nervously.

“I thought you’d still be at work,” he told him anxiously. Cas stared at him like he thought it would be the last time he would see him and shook his head lamely, his hands curling around his knees.

“I got let off early,” Cas told him, smiling humorlessly. “Not doing a good job with focusing lately, apparently.”

Dean nodded, thinking about the eight times this week Bobby had yelled at him for the same thing. Dean swallowed heavily.

“I, uh,” he stuttered nervously, wishing it had never become so hard to talk to Cas. Dean stabbed his thumb behind him, in the direction of the stairs. “I was just going to, uh, grab some stuff. I didn’t want to—to disturb you, or anything.”

Cas suddenly looked away for a moment, schooling his expression, before turning back to Dean. “Okay,” he said slowly, and then suddenly blurted out, “You’re not sleeping.”

Dean figured it wasn’t really a secret, even though he hadn’t been able to look at his reflection in the mirror since last week. He felt exhausted but couldn’t sleep to save his life, and if the nervous looks Sam and Sarah had been giving him were any indication, he probably looked like a relapsing addict. Which, in a way, he was.

Dean tried to smile. It tasted bitter. “So it goes.”

Cas looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t. He turned back to look at his wine glass with intense concentration, biting his lip, and Dean just looked at him, because even looking sad and tired and defeated, Cas was the most beautiful thing Dean had ever seen. He forced himself to tear his gaze away after a moment, his throat and chest burning like he had just chugged a bottle of bleach, his hands curling into fists at his sides as he turned his back to the living room, turning toward the stairs.

He willed himself to take a step, but it didn’t happen. Instead, something inside of him broke, snapping like a rubber band that had been pulled just too far. Suddenly, before Dean had even realized it, he was crying, his chest compressing with the urge to start sobbing. He was broken and he was angry and he loved Cas so much but Cas was leaving him, and he didn’t understand why. It was too much, like trying to put a lid on a container already overflowing.

Dean turned back to Cas suddenly and demanded in a voice that sounded broken to even his own ears, “ _Why_?”

Cas’s eyes went wide, surprised. He opened and closed his mouth a few times before he decided that words weren’t working out for him and just continued to stare at Dean like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Like he couldn’t _believe_ he was seeing Dean breaking down in front of him. The only time Dean remembered crying in front of Cas was during the wedding, and that wasn’t like this.

Dean shook with a sob he refused to let loose and continued to demand, “ _Why?_ What did I do, and how can I fix it, because I’m _sorry_ and I don’t understand but I’ll do _anything_ if it means you don’t leave. If you’re leaving to be happy then I’ll let you go, I _swear,_ but I just want you to tell me so I stop thinking constantly about everything I could’ve done wrong and how I could’ve failed you like I’ve failed _everything_ else in my life—”

“Dean, no,” Cas said suddenly, springing onto his feet with tears of his own. He shook his head hard. “No, no, it’s not that, Dean, please don’t cry, I didn’t—I don’t—I thought—”

Cas didn’t want him to cry but still wouldn’t look at him. The ring on Dean’s finger felt like a lead weight and he felt a scream bubbling up in his throat that he knew would sit there until he got in the Impala, and then he would scream himself hoarse because he’d really fucked everything up this time, he’d ruined _everything_ , and he didn’t even know how.

Dean wondered if anyone would even miss him if he just disappeared.

As if Cas could read his mind, his expression suddenly broke into a thousand pieces, sadness and grief and regret and fear all in one, and he sounded like he was choking on it when he whispered, “I thought you didn’t love me anymore.”

That was enough to floor Dean. He felt like he was on a roller coaster that suddenly turned upside down even though the track was still going straight, and he blinked at Cas in complete disbelief for a moment before he found the words to demand, “What?”

“I thought you didn’t love me,” Cas replied like his words were knives, slicing their way out of his throat. He looked away but forced himself to look back, his big blue eyes filled with tears. “I—I don’t know, I just—I thought—and then you didn’t even show emotion when I said—you just left without—I don’t know. I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

“God, Cas,” Dean replied, voice breaking. “Of _course_ you were wrong. Fuck, Cas, I love you so much that I wanted to die when you said that to me. I thought ripping out my own fucking heart would hurt less. But I thought it was what you wanted, I thought it would make you happy, so I left, not wanting to make anything harder for you.”

Cas kept shaking his head all through Dean’s explanation. His eyes had a little more light in them, a little more relief and hope. Dean could feel the bubble in his chest, feeling like it might finally pop. He didn’t know what it would mean when it did.

“What made you think that?” Dean demanded, hurt. “Why would you _believe_ that?”

Cas looked at him for a second, broken, and whispered, “No one’s ever picked me.”

Dean’s heart shattered, because of _course_ he should have thought that Cas’s disastrous childhood would be behind this. Of _course_ Cas’s fear of getting abandoned like his family had done to him would be why he started pushing Dean away, why he thought that after five years of peace that it was going to all go wrong. Of _course_ Cas would drive himself scared to the point that he already thought it was a lost cause. Dean should have guessed, but Cas also should have told Dean about his before he walked into the house and said he wanted it to end.

Something Cas and Dean had always shared as that they hated themselves, but they hated themselves so much less when they were together. But they were both so scared of ruining it, both terrified that the wrong move could turn it all upside down. Dean should have known it would be a mixture of their own self-destructive natures that would have brought them to this point.

So Dean did the only thing he could do. He slowly closed the space between them, allowing for plenty of time for Cas to tell him to stop, but he never did. He grabbed Castiel’s hands and held them tight, squeezing them hard and Cas gripped back just as desperately, tears welling in his eyes again. Dean looked Cas right in the eyes, standing firm, making sure that Cas would see the complete honesty in Dean’s eyes before he started speaking, the place where his skin was on Cas’s lit up like the fourth of July.

“I will always pick you,” Dean told him, and Cas bit his lip against more tears. “I always have, and I always will. You can’t think like that, Cas. I don’t know what happened to make you think that, but I love you more than anything else in the goddamn world, and I don’t want you to think that I don’t, okay? Whatever it takes, if it means sitting right here and telling each other things we don’t want to or if it means seeing a therapist or something, we’re going to do that, and we’re going to fix anything that might’ve accidentally gone wrong, okay? Because I’m not going anywhere. I love you, and I’m not leaving unless you really want me to. Okay?”

Cas nodded desperately, closing his eyes and taking a big breath. Finally, he opened his eyes, and he murmured sadly, “But you hate therapy.”

“I love you so much more than I hate therapy,” Dean whispered honestly, dropping Cas’s hands to reach for his face, holding it softly in between his hands and barely daring to believe he was allowed to do this, so afraid in the last few days that he never would again. He laid a kiss on Cas’s forehead and whispered, “Okay?”

Cas nodded again before suddenly throwing his arms around Dean’s shoulders and pulling them closer, burrowing his face in Dean’s shoulder as Dean grabbed for the back of Cas’s shirt, holding on like maybe Cas would never have to put space in between them again. Dean buried his head in Cas’s hair and finally dared to let himself believe that this was all going to be okay, that this had all just been a horrible misunderstanding and it was all going to work out. Dean ran his hands up and down Cas’s spine soothingly and just kept breathing, holding onto Cas with every hope in his body, and letting himself believe that everything will be okay.

“I love you,” Cas murmured into his shoulder, gripping tighter. “I love you. I’m sorry. Don’t leave again. Please, don’t go, I’m sorry.”

“Shh,” Dean soothed him, holding him closer and closer, just letting them both breathe as they stood in the middle of the living room with their hearts in their hands, just holding onto each other for dear life and knowing that they didn’t want to leave, they wanted to stay, they didn’t want a divorce or a separation—they just wanted to understand each other. They just wanted to pinpoint the reason why it all almost went sour, and fix it.

Dean didn’t go back to Sam’s that night. Instead, he and Cas ended up falling asleep on the couch, Cas sprawled on top of him as they told old stories back and forth, reminding each other of the funny and the embarrassing, remembering the good times and trying to forcefully forget the worst time that they had made it through, and they were okay. In the end, they fell asleep like that, with Cas snoring in Dean’s ear and Dean’s neck ending up aching from the way it ended up laying on the arm of the couch, but when Dean woke up to Cas murmured nonsense in his sleep, their arms wrapped around each other and their bodies pressed close, Dean was willing to forget the bad and keep chasing the good, the same way he always had been, and the same way he always would—with Cas by his side. And, really, that was worth everything and more.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my anon for the prompt, I hope you guys liked it! 
> 
> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> x Kay


End file.
